Innovate UK

Innovate UK is the new name for the Technology Strategy Board is the UK’s innovation agency, and the prime channel through which the Government incentivises business-led technology innovation.

Our role is to stimulate and support innovation business-led innovation in order to accelerate economic growth.

Established in July 2007, we have invested more than £2.5 billion in innovation projects to date, the majority of the funding being matched by business. We have directly supported projects involving more than 4,000 companies and worked with nearly every university in the UK.

Through connections and networks we enable people and companies to work together and share ideas to make innovation happen, and we offer a range of programmes and tools, each with different strengths, to support businesses on the innovation journey.

We break down barriers to innovation, for example through large-scale demonstrators for new ideas and products. We offer funding to de-risk development of innovative products and services. We run competitions for RD funding in priority areas with strong potential, as well as non-themed ‘always open’ competitions such as Smart. We help business understand future markets and the innovation opportunities created by the societal challenges – and make the most of them. And we bring together partners to maximise funding for innovation and get groups of organisations working together, helping to ‘join up’ the innovation landscape.

Everything we do is aimed at helping business bring innovative products and services more quickly to market.